I'm pretty confident in Bethesda this time. They're well aware of all the criticisms and inconsistencies their games have accrued over the years, and this time I think they're putting a lot of effort into artistic direction. I don't know why, but something about Skyrim's announcement and release schedule seems so...perfectly planned. A date as significant as 11.11.11 is one you can bet Bethesda won't delay - clearly they already have much of the core game done and are quite confident in the development process at this point.
What are good graphics? Is it the artistic style or the animation or the tightness and clarity of textures or extreme realism? I have no idea. Everybody has different tastes on what they enjoy viewing..
You've a point here. This may sound blasphemous, but I never found Oblivion visually spectacular - I wasn't really following coverage of it when it was released, but looking back at all those muddy promotional screenshots with no anti-aliasing and 50% draw distances, I honestly can't believe people were actually using that game as a benchmark back in 2006.
In my opinion, vanilla Morrowind has better graphics than vanilla Oblivion from a stylistic standpoint. The faces aren't randomized and repetitive - they fit each race's profile more faithfully than many of the Facegen NPCs in the latter had. The environment in Morrowind seemed more realistic - everything seemed smaller and tighter, whereas everything in Oblivion seemed blown up, as if you were running around with a tighter field of view. All of the armor in Morrowind, even the mundane Imperial/Nordic sets perceived as your typical "medieval" equipment, had intricate patterns and trims on it. All of the armor in Oblivion resembled a fat suit with metal oven mitts. /rage